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Copyright Decision In Australia Vindicates 3d-Party EPG Provider
angry tapir writes "In a landmark decision, the High Court of Australia has ruled that Electronic Program Guide (EPG) vendor IceTV has not violated the copyright of Channel 9 by reproducing programming information in its third-party EPG. This case has been running since May 2006, when the Nine Network alleged that IceTV's electronic program guide infringed the copyright of Channel 9's television schedule."
IceTV provide a decent product, and the big companies were trying to stifle it while they faffed around. Good to see them win.
Yay me!
You can't copyright a fact.
To think anyone could argue over that for three years...
I recall a recent story about UK train schedules being made available by a third party, which *was* deemed an infringement.
You guys got it right. Thumbs-up.
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Can be found here.
Well done Ice TV.
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I equate charging for a TV guide to the same thing as charging me for the price list of a store, it's lunacy.
What are channel9 complaining about... More people having access to their programming? Surely that's a good thing
Not if they don't sit down and watch the advertisements.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
What the court has said is that although collections of facts can be copyrighted, the question is to the degree of originality in the expression of those facts.
In the case of the TV guide, the alleged infringement consisted of two pieces of information; the program title and the time of transmission. The title is supplied by the program's creator; not Channel 9 and the time can only be expressed in a standard way (Channel 9 could hardly claim copyright of "7:30 pm"); Channel 9 has therefore not exercised creativity or originality.
The train timetable is much the same. There are two pieces of information; a station name (which is much like the program name) and a departure time. Cityrail has not exercised any creativity or originality in the expression of this information.
It is the lack of originality of expression that results in the information not being copyright; it is not a fair use claim, so the amount of information copied does not matter.
The big issue with the FunkWorks ruling is that train times are not facts, they are fiction. Complete and utter fiction. And therefor fully copyrightable :)